June 11 1934

The music of beauty remembered

Frederick Delius, the famous composer, whose death we announce on another page, was born in Bradford in Yorkshire. Frederick was first taught the violin by Mr Bauerkeller, of the Halle Orchestra, and later by Mr Haddock, of Leeds.

An appreciation

Delius was a composer quite unlike any other in his technical means of expression and in his emotional reactions to the art of music.

During the last half-century music has developed along two main tracks, and Delius has avoided both. We can call these the tracks of symphonic and illustrative music - music "absolute" and "programme" music.

Delius has written few if any masterpieces in which a classical formalism is observed. On the other hand, it is a mistake to regard Delius as a tone-painter, an "impressionist," a maker of "programme music." Consider, for instance, one of his loveliest but simplest works, "In a Summer Garden."

The work begins with a melody which Grieg could have composed. Delius makes it his own by quickly drawing it into the tissue of his orchestra, until it is perceived only as we perceive a single strand of a texture; or, rather, we see it as though lapped by waves of sound - washed in them. The melody is lost, but - and here is the secret of Delius's way of sustaining his form - other melodies grow out of it; fragments are used almost as motives; the thought is continuous; the melody is but one factor in a process of musical thinking and feeling which works according to the comprehensive logic of changeful emotion.

Nearly all of Delius's music recollects emotion in tranquillity. The sudden climaxes of passion - and we get one of the most beautiful in all music in the "Summer Garden" - are not climaxes caused by excitement of blood or nerve. They are the climaxes of a mind moved by the poetry that comes of beauty remembered. Delius is always reminding us that beauty is what is left for us when the show of life has passed on. Experiences have all sorts of values and significances. Other composers are more human than Delius, because their music contains the dynamics of life and action felt immediately - now!

Delius seems almost always to be aloof from the life active - life which, because it is active, is transitory.

To-day Delius's music is loved, not merely liked, because in an age when most of the arts have little to do with beauty, but have apparently been overwhelmed by the complexity, the cynicism, and even the hastiness and noise of modern civilisation in this age, Delius has made for us a music which is serene and never unbeautiful.

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